Author: billkralovec

One of the most popular public beaches on an Iron County lake is Pentoga Park. The public beach, playground, and camping site are located on a former indigenous Ojibwe (Anishinaabe) settlement. The village was on the southeast shore of Gichi-zaaga’igan, meaning “big lake”, today known as Chicagon Lake, a corrupted form of the original Ojibwe name. When European settlers came to the area and set up mining towns, the local Ojibwe had peaceful trading relations with them. I think it was because there were never a lot of Ojibwe in the area, one account I read estimated 5,000 in the entire Upper Peninsula. Ojibwe Headman Meshkawaanagonebi, known as Chief John Edwards to area residents, abandoned the land in 1891 and left with his wife, Pentoga, to the Lac Vieux Desert reservation across the border in Wisconsin. The county purchased the land in 1924 and set up the park to preserve the burial grounds.

All that is left of the Ojibwe village is the graveyard. Ojibwe culture buried their dead and placed a wooden shelter over the grave to protect from the elements and keep animals out. The bodies were wrapped in birch bark along with their most prized possessions. The shelter had a small door and a family totem. They placed the door towards the west, the direction the Ojibwe thought Bangishimog, or heaven, was located. I like that idea of heaven being towards the setting sun!

It was a momentous day for the Kralovec family yesterday as we “scaled” Mount Arvon (1,979 feet or 603 meters) and reached the state of Michigan’s highest point. “Mount” Arvon is located in neighboring Baraga County in the Huron Mountain Range. The name comes from the township it is located. Early settlers named the area after the Arvon region in Wales. It was recognized as Michigan’s highest point in 1982. It is located in a remote part of the western Upper Peninsula, 27 miles southeast of the town of L’anse, on Lake Superior.

It was easy to find as there were several descriptions online about how to reach the spot. The road is much improved since many reviews on the internet were posted. We drove to the top parking lot, although I recommend stopping short of this and walking up on a trail that is off to the side of the road. We didn’t see it on the way up as it is not well-marked. Officials have cleared the lookout a bit down from the peak that offers views all the way to Huron Bay, a part of Lake Superior. It was a cold, grey day and we could feel the cool winds coming from the lake. Michigan is not known for its mountains, so 603 meters above sea level is not that impressive, but it was a fun day out trying to find it.

We stopped along the way to visit Michigan’s “Grand Canyon”, Canyon Falls Gorge on the Sturgeon River. The Sturgeon River has cut through the rocks, creating a beautiful gorge. We walked several miles along the river trail, which is part of the North Country Trail. It was a very peaceful spot and I wanted to keep going, but the kids started complaining. I was grateful they were spending time with us.

I love the vast amounts of forests we have in the Upper Peninsula. So much beauty to explore!

We landed at Hamad International Airport at approximately 6:00 AM on Monday, June 23 to catch our connecting flight to the USA. Our two-hour layover went by quickly as we stopped for a coffee and cheesecake at an Ili Cafe on our way to our departure gate. The flight departed on time around 8:30 AM. Less than 12 hours later, Iran launched 14 missiles toward Al Udeid Air Force base in Qatar (40 kilometers away from the airport). Qatar officials closed Qatar airspace, stranding passengers. Hamad processes around 10,000 passengers daily, and clearing the backlog will take a few days. I reckon the airspace closed sometime in the late afternoon on Monday, with the bombing around 8:00 PM. Officials reopened the airspace early Tuesday morning. Thankfully, we were off the ground and out of Qatar airspace before the closure took place. In March this year, we just missed the earthquake in Bangkok, flying 4 hours before it hit the city, and the airport was closed. Fortunately for the soldiers at the base, 13 of the missiles were intercepted, and 1 missile flew off course into the water.

As you can see above, we left in the morning. Nadia took a beautiful photo of the Red Sea as we were leaving Saudi Arabia’s airspace. A few hours later, missiles were seen over Doha. We landed in Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and made our way through the crowds from the international terminal #5 to the domestic terminal #3. I had a window seat on the flight to Marquette, Michigan, the largest city in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The pilot warned of upcoming turbulence due to a storm on Lake Michigan. During the summer months, the relatively cool lake water interact with warm, humid air masses moving over the region causing turbulence in atmosphere. The series of photographs below show our plane approaching the massive cloud system.

The flight however was quite smooth and the anticipated turbulence and instructions to stay in our seats for the 30-minute flight were never needed. I slept through the grey clouds and didn’t wake up until we touched down on the runway of the former K.I. Sawyer International Airport. It used to be an Air Force Base that was developed in the 1950s during the height of the Cold War. It served as the home to nuclear-armed bombers and a strategic refueling station. It is appropriate that our final destination leaving Doha, Qatar on June 23 was a former nuclear bomber base. K.I. Sawyer was closed in 1995 when the collapse of the Soviet Union ended the need for such a remote and expensive air base. Over 4,500 jobs were lost and it was another blow to the economy of the Upper Peninsula. The local high school, the Gwinn “Modeltowners” had a large and diverse student population thanks to the base. Today, the school is just another shrinking school system in rural Michigan. The Stealth Bombers that delivered the strike to the nuclear sites in Iran departed from an Air Force Base in Missouri that probably replaced K.I. Sawyer.

We arrived at 10:00 PM Monday evening and our family was waiting for us at the small airport. It was so nice to see our two sons, my nephew, my brother and his wife. They were kind to greet us and drive the 90 minutes to our home in Iron County, Michigan.

Yuval Noah Harari’s “Sapiens” was a brilliant read! His thinking shows the world in a totally different light from other writers and changed how I view our species. Like Jared Diamond, he takes vast time periods and puts them into a fascinating paradigm. He broke down human evolution into several revolutions:

• Cognitive Revolution – 70,000 – 30,000 years ago Accidental genetic mutations rewire Homo sapiens brains to think, communicate, and collaborate in unprecedented ways. Money, Empire and Religion are the three great unifiers of humankind.
• Agricultural Revolution – 12,000 years ago – Our ancestors domesticate a handful of plants (wheat, rice, corn, barley, potatoes) between 9,500 and 3,500 BC and still today it provides 90% of our calories. Allowed much greater population numbers.
• Scientific Revolution – 500 years ago

There are too many interesting ideas to explore, but below are a few of the ones that I have time to think about.

• “It is doubtful where Homo sapiens will still be around a thousand years from now, so 2 million years is really out of our league” – Harari is referring to Homo erectus, an early species of human. He thinks that technology and genetic engineering will so utterly change us that we will no longer be the same species.
• “And if you spend hours praying to non-existent guardian spirits, aren’t you wasting precious time, time better spent foraging, fighting, and fornicating?” Sapiens is the only animal that can tell imaginary stories, share abstract concepts such as future possibilities, etc. Sometimes these are beneficial, such as, don’t go to the waterhole at sunset, many predators visit there during the dry season. Some are not, if you become a suicide bomber, you will have access to a thousand virgins in the afterlife.
• My major insight from him is the idea of common myths unify human beings. These can be religious, patriotic, cultural, etc. An example is of a Limited Liability Company (Peugeot) is fiction. It only exists if we all agree in the founding documents of company. Our superpower is to allow millions of strangers to cooperate and work towards common goals.
• The dog was the first animal domesticated by Homo sapiens, at least 15,000 years ago. “This 15,000-year bond has yielded a much deeper understanding and affection between humans and dogs than between humans and any other animal.”
• “A typical forager 30,000 years ago had access to only one type of sweet food – ripe fruit.”
• “The forager economy provided most people with more interesting lives than agriculture or industry.” They also had less infectious diseases because of population density and no domesticated animals.
• “A diet based on cereals is poor in minerals and vitamins, hard to digest, and really bad for your teeth and gums.
• Humans evolved for millions of years in small bands of a few dozen individuals. The Ag Revolution was “not enough time to allow an instinct for mass cooperation to evolve.”
• An expensive trip to Paris by a millionaire and his wife wanting a vacation “is not a reflection of some independent desire, but rather of an ardent belief in the myths of romantic consumerism.
• cognitive dissonance – The uncomfortable feeling that comes when you hold two conflicting beliefs, attitudes, or ideas at the same time.
• “The truth is that empire has been the world’s most common form of political organization for the last 2500 years.
• Beliefs in social order come from practicalities. Why were Africans regarded as sub-human to justify slavery? Because of their genetic superiority, they could survive in warm climates with malaria, etc.. This translated into cultural inferiority and the European plantation owners told themselves the myth to justify enslaving fellow human beings.
• “The Romans killed no more than a few thousand Christians in 300 years.” “By contrast, over the course of 1,500 years, Christians slaughtered Christians by the millions.”
• “Money is the only trust system created by humans that can bridge almost any cultural gap, and that does not discriminate on the basis of religion, gender, race, age, or sexual orientation.”
• “The Christian saints did not merely resemble the old polytheistic gods. Often they were the same gods in disguise”
• “Zoroastrianism saw the world as a cosmic battle between the good god Ahura Mazda and the evil god Angra Mainyu.

It was the end of an era on Sunday as we spent the final day in our home of six years in Tashkent. Our two eldest children are already living on their own in the USA, and our youngest who is a senior next school year, we are downsizing and moving into a much smaller home. It is still close to the school but in the Amirobod mahalla. We spent most of the day packing boxes to prepare for the move that will take place over the summer. We also packed our suitcases for our summer holidays. We departed Tashkent early Monday morning.

In the morning, we visited the Arca Mebel Markazi (Arca Furniture Market) to buy a sunshade for the back garden of our new house. We’ve seen incredible growth in Tashkent over the past 6 years and remember the difficulty of finding high-quality outdoor furniture when we first arrived. The Arca Market is basically a furniture shopping mall. I noticed Turkish and Russian furniture brands, and it has everything from bedrooms, kitchens, patios, and living rooms, etc. I thought the prices were quite reasonable, and we bought the shade in the photo on the far right for around $100. I recommend newcomers to Tashkent looking for furniture check it out. They offer delivery and set up, and by the afternoon, it was already on our patio.

Our flights so far have been very smooth. The Yandex driver was able to take all of our bags and us. Traffic to the airport and lines at the airport were light. Departing at 3:00 AM does have its advantages. Qatar Airways flights between Tashkent and Doha are running as scheduled. I noticed we flew around Afghanistan and Iran airspace, lengthening our flight by probably an hour. I prefer using Doha as a connecting hub rather than Istanbul. The airport is beautiful and not as sprawling as Istanbul. They literally have a forest in the center of the airport so we took the elevated pathway through the trees. American airports need to step up their game!

It is so nice to travel with family. We are having a lot of laughs as we experience the inconvenience of long-distance travel together.

I love equinoxes and solstices, and I don’t know why they are not a bigger deal in our society. Yesterday, Saturday, June 21, I took my dog Obie for a walk in the Milly Bog Park for a sunset stroll. I snapped this photo above from the Navoy Monument hill. I worked all day Friday, closing the office at school. On Friday night, we had a nice dinner at Syrovanya Restaurant, saying goodbye to friends. We live such strange lifestyles as global nomads. Close friends come and go in your lives annually as we move all around the world.

I also finally found a “map match” for the birthmark on my abdomen. I was born with a “port wine stain” (aka – capillary malformation) and unlike other types of birthmarks, it does not fade over time. Some people get laser surgery to remove it, but most people like me leave it on. It is not visible unless my shirt is off. I joked that it looked like a map of Madagascar, and I should make it into a tattoo. I don’t know why we started talking about it, but when I showed my friend, a dual citizen of the USA and Belgium, he said it looked like the Belgian province of Limburg as you can see below. I even have the lower right enclave section of “Voeren,” which is a distinctive piece of Limburg that is surrounded by Germany and the Netherlands. I now have this province on my life bucket list. Limburg has Belgium’s only national park, great cycling paths, and is the center of gin production in the country. It sounds like it was made for me!

I am catching up on my blogging this weekend as the smoke clears from the end of the school year. Last weekend we had a delightful Father’s Day dinner at the Curry House restaurant here in Tashkent. Thanks to Lisa for organizing the event. Our wives brought flowers for us, so we had to do the Latin American flower pose! All three of my children did an Instagram post in my honor. All I ever want on Father’s Day, or any day for that matter, is to spend time with my family and friends. It was a pretty good meal and, more importantly, a lot of laughs.

Best-selling author Michael Lewis tells the story of Sam Bankman-Fried, the billionaire who founded the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the financial trading firm behind it, Alameda Research. It is a fascinating story and gives me some understanding of how cryptocurrency exchanges work.

Sam Bankman-Fried is an autistic, mathematical genius. He started in the financial world working for Jane Street, a high-volume global trading firm. Jane Street executives target MIT/Stanford physics and mathematics students when recruiting for their firm. Lewis described the interview process which basically consisted of solving mathematical probability puzzles. This weeds out only the most astute thinking when it comes to risk and trading. These types of people, including Sam, are successful at this trade and make millions of dollars trading shares, bonds, currencies, etc. on markets around the world. They live an obsessive life of almost constant trading around the clock to take advantage of when different markets open and close globally. It reminded me of the high-speed traders Lewis covered in one of his other books. They do make 6 and 7-figure salaries by doing this however, and not many people starting out in their careers can make that kind of money. Bankman Fried after awhile however got bored and wanted to more to make a difference in people’s lives. He got involved with Effective Alturists and thought he could make more money to give to worthy cause so started his own company

I could see how Bankman-Fried moved into cryptocurrency. It is like another stock exchange but for young males. The digital amounts of money earned and lost are staggering. Lewis roughly calculated FTX took in over $23 billion dollars and spent over $14 billion dollars when the company went bankrupt in November of 2022. That left $9 billion unaccounted for, and Lewis and law enforcement officials had to sort out where the missing $9 billion went. Crazy to be dealing with amounts that most people wouldn’t earn in a thousand lifetimes. Some of the money was stolen by hackers, some was lost when currencies dropped in value, some on real estate. Investigators are probably still trying to find out what happened to the funds.

In some ways, I feel sorry for Bankman-Fried. He was an immature young man with social challenges who got seduced by the thrill of online trading and cryptocurrencies. He wasn’t greedy or evil, but reckless, unsympathetic, and thoughtless, and probably hurt a lot of investors. He needed some adults in the company to put structural systems of customer service, accounting, financial office policy and procedures, etc. It sounds like Sam did know that he was siphoning customer funds, however, from his company (Alemeda Research) inside of FTX. I think he thought that he could use them to earn even more money and later give it back to customers. He is currently serving 25 years in federal prison. He girlfriend got two years, and a couple of other employees go probation or short prison sentences due to their cooperation with authorities in finding funds. Many of the investors got paid back and the employees had to forfeit billions of dollars.

Michael Lewis was criticized by some for his lenient treatment of Sam Bankman Fried in the book. I disagree with that. I think he gave an accurate portrayal of a complex figure and situation.

I am interested in the Köppen-Geiger climate classification, which is a widely used method for categorizing world climates. It simply uses temperature and precipitation annual data from a location. Wladimir Köppen (Hamburg) and Rudolph Geiger (Munich) were German meteorologists who collaborated to create this classification system in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They used a simple letter-based coding system. The top level divides climate into 5 zones

• A Tropical – avg. temperatures above 18C year-round
• B Dry – arid/semi-arid climates where evaporation exceeds precipitation
• C Temperate – mild climates with distinct seasons
• D Continental – cold climates with severe winters
• E Polar – very cold climates where warmest month is below 10C

Each main group is further subdivided using additional letters that specify seasonal Precipitation patterns (like ‘f’ for year-round rain, ‘s’ for dry summers, ‘w’ for dry winters) and temperature characteristics (‘a’ for hot summer, “d” for extremely continental) and a summary is below.

The map above (left map) shows the classifications for Uzbekistan. In the west of the country, the vast Kyzylkum Desert (“red sands”) and now the Aralkum Desert (the former Aral Sea) make up the bright yellow BWk (B – arid / W – desert / k – cold arid). As one moves east, the next climatic zone is the light brown BSk (B – arid / S – steppe / k – cold arid).

Tashkent is located in the upper “finger” in the far east of Uzbekistan near the Kazakh border. The bright green signifies Csa (C – warm temperate / S – steppe / a -hot summer). The “a” hot summer time of year has reached us. Temperatures this week this month have been reaching the 90°F (30C) range in the afternoon. I love summer and hot weather, and enjoy walking with Obi and biking/running in the city.

Climate change in Central Asia will change the Climatic classifications in Uzbekistan over this century. Hotter temperatures and less precipitation will bring two next climate classifications into the country. The map on the right shows predicted climate data from 2076 to 2100. BWh (Arid / desert / hot arid) and BSh (Arid / Steppe / hot arid) will be expanding from the south. The climate of Eastern Uzbekistan will be more like Iran, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan, and the Gulf Region. Tashkent will be on the edge of its current CSa with BSh creeping in. That means less snow/rain and a hotter and drier city.

One of the highlights of this weekend was listening to Nadia singing a cover of Stone Temple Pilots’ 1992 song, “Plush”. Our school’s house band, “The Foul Owls,” played at last night’s staff end-of-year party. The new restaurant Lago Bianco is located close to school in a section of Furqat Park. Besides the large restaurant and bar, it has 2 artificial ponds and spacious, green grounds. It is perfect for big parties because people can dine and relax both inside and outside. It was a delightful evening of camaraderie and celebration as we wind down the school year.

I must be getting old because I am starting to enjoy opera more and more! Last night, I saw Puccini’s classic opera, Tosca, at the Navoy Theatre here in Tashkent. It was so uplifting to be in the presence of live singers and a full orchestra. It is a cheap night out in Tashkent thanks to the long history of the arts being supported in Uzbekistan.

Not only is it the performance itself, but the beautiful, historic theatre is a delight to spend time in. I watched the first two acts from row 9 on the ground floor and then watched the third act on the third-floor balcony. It allowed me to watch the orchestra closely, and it is fascinating to see the different sections of the orchestra come into and out of the performance, matching the singers and the story. The French horns blast to signal action and tension, the four cellos play when Tosca is sad, etc. I realized it is an essential and strong partnership between the orchestra and the singers.

The story itself is full of cliches and melodrama. The play debuted 125 years ago, so I don’t think I am spoiling anything. The military general (Scarpia) wants the lead singer (Tosca) as his wife and imprisons and tortures her boyfriend (Cavaradossi). She stabs and kills the general when he forces himself on her. Tosca’s boyfriend was supposed to have a fake execution, part of the deal Tosca mad with Scarpia. However, being the villain, he has his soldiers put in real bullets and not blanks so he dies. When Tosca learns the truth, she kills herself. The one aspect I liked about the libretto was that it was set in the year 1800 when Napoleon took over Rome. I didn’t know he invaded Italy. I like historical fiction and the play gave a sense of what it was like then. Tosca is the fifth most performed opera in the world in the past 25 years.